Sit back and take a look. Consider the text. You may think that youare reading the marketing department’s copy for the back cover,but in fact you are on the opening page. “You are about to beginreading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the worldaround you fade….” Find a comfy chair. Pour yourself a drink.

Here is an infinite regress, a literary equivalent of the two facingmirrors. Two hundred pages into the book,you will have gone through many drinks, butare still waiting to get into the substance ofCalvino's story. At this point, one of thecharacters describes his idea for a novel,and it sums up Calvino’s ploy: "I have hadthe idea of writing a novel composed onlyof beginnings of novels. The protagonistcould be a Reader who is continuallyinterrupted. The Reader buys the newnovel A by Author Z. But it is a defectivecopy, he can’t go beyond the beginning….He returns to the bookshop to have thevolume exchanged…."

And so on and so forth. Calvino has devised a puzzler for us, a celebration of lectio interruptus unmatched in the annals of post-modernism. He presents a fractured narrative in which we followa reader as he starts ten separate novels—in each instance, our protagonist is unable to get past the opening pages of the book,due to various obstacles and misadventures. Chapters of thevarious incomplete books alternate with an account of the readertrying to track down what Paul Harvey would call "the rest of thestory."

And yes, Calvino tosses in intrigue and romance. But not youreveryday garden variety. The guys in this book have the strangestfetish of all—they want to watch women while they are…(pausefor dramatic buildup)…reading! Revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries are scheming, but only to overthrow the texts. The government and police authorities get involved too, but in thiscrazy world they are little more than especially influential arbiters ofliterary tastes.

Meanwhile, the character talk…that is, when they are not reading. But the dialogue is several steps beyond (or perhaps below) whatpasses for insight at your local creative writing workshop. Calvino's characters typically make comments such as these:

"The novel I would most like to read at this moment should haveas its driving force only the desire to narrate, to pile stories uponstories, without trying to impose a philosophy of life on you…."

"The novels that attract me most are those that create an illusionof transparency around a knot of human relationships as obscure,cruel, and perverse as possible."

"I like books where all the mysteries and the anguish pass througha precise and cold mind, without shadows, like the mind of achessplayer."

"You dream of rediscovering a condition of natural reading,innocent, primitive."

Along the way, Calvino borrows almost every tried-and-true trickfrom the post-modern playbook. We have our texts within texts, as important to this style of writing as the murder weapon in a whodunit. We have the crazy cut-and-paste juxtaposition of different prosestyles, all presented with that implied wink of the authorial eye, sowe know where to direct our applause. We have characters who—as in so many post-modern stories—always seem to be writers themselves, or else editors or academics or readers (there aremultiple examples of each in Calvino's novel). We wander aroundin a psychological haze, closed in by a worldview that celebrateswords over deeds, sentences over actions, textuality over reality.

As I describe it, this book perhaps sounds overly conceptualizedand too self-congratulatory. Yet what ultimately distinguishes Ifon a Winter’s Night a Traveler is the sheer determination withwhich Calvino pushes his ridiculous conceit, and the virtuosity withwhich he withholds closure even while constantly celebrating its importance to his venture. The ten opening chapters included herecover a wide range of modes of expression, settings and attitudes,and each one is a little gem, a self-enclosed universe where themeta-textual games have been put aside and a rich fictive worldcomes to the fore. Calvino, in this regard, reminds me of thosegreat British actors who pride themselves on being able to playany role, and take on the most disparate parts in order to prove it.

But those folks eventually get knighted for their troubles. The readersof this book are merely left benighted. Calvino gets the last laugh, although you might just be convinced to laugh along, even if the jokeis on you.

I might go further, and claim that you won’t be able to put downthese stories until you reach the end. But that would be unfortunate,since this is a book that only includes beginnings. A recurring loopback to the start. But don’t let that put you off. Sit down. Take alook. Consider the text….